Euro NCAP 5-star award for Kia Soul

The new Kia Soul urban crossover has been awarded the maximum 5-Star safety rating in the latest Euro NCAP crash test results.  The Soul’s safety ratings – with scores of 87 per cent for Adult Occupant Protection, 86 per cent for Child Protection and 86 per cent for Safety Assist equipment – place the Kia among the safest B-Segment sized family cars.

“The latest Euro NCAP result is a major landmark for Kia.  This is a superb follow-up to the 5-Star Euro NCAP rating achieved by the Kia cee’d in 2007.  Soul was designed and engineered to meet or surpass the expectations of European, North American and global consumers in every respect – including safety,” commented Mr Panu Vainamo, General Manager Marketing, Kia Motors Europe.

“Kia’s safety engineers developed the new Soul to provide the highest levels of occupant protection in real-world accident scenarios.  Our engineers predicted that Soul would achieve a 5-Star rating in both Euro NCAP and the very different NHTSA tests in the USA.  This Euro NCAP result confirms the major advances made by Kia with its latest family car,” added Mr Vainamo.

During development, Kia engineers initially concentrated on ensuring Soul had high levels of ‘active safety’ with good visibility, responsive and agile handling, and powerful braking, to enable Kia drivers to avoid accidents and other everyday motoring hazards.

Every Soul supplied in the UK features an Electronic Stability Control as standard.  Fully automatic, ESC is a ‘proven technology’ in accident avoidance, countering excess oversteer and understeer so the car follows the course intended by the driver.  This system comes with TCS (all-speed Traction Control System) and BAS (emergency Brake Assistance System). 

If a collision is unavoidable, new Kia Soul is engineered to safeguard the occupants with a range of ‘passive safety’ measures as standard – starting with a robust all-steel bodyshell.  State-of-the-art computer-aided design was employed by Kia engineers, together with ‘closed loop’ engineering techniques, to create the Soul five-door bodyshell structure. 

Featuring high-tensile strength steel in key areas, the bodyshell is designed to offer occupants good protection in front, side, rear and roll-over accidents.

Every Soul sold in Europe is equipped as standard with dual front airbags, front side and full-length curtain airbags (to protect the occupants in both seat rows), height-adjustable front seatbelts with pretensioners and belt load-limiters, plus three 3-point seat belts for rear seat occupants.  In addition, all UK models come with ‘active’ front seat head restraints as standard.

Euro NCAP
The Kia cee’d earned a 5-Star rating under the previous Euro NCAP testing regime in 2007 – the first Korean brand vehicle to achieve this top safety rating.  Starting in January 2009, Euro NCAP revised its testing strategy to encompass four main zones of interest – Adult Occupant Protection, Child Protection, Pedestrian Protection and Safety Assist – which contribute 50%, 20%, 20% and 10% to a single overall rating, expressed as a star rating.  Ratings achieved under the old regime are not comparable with those achieved under the new scheme.